What’s this? Ludum Dare 32!

It has been a bit of a challenging month. Yet somehow I found the motivation to power through Ludum Dare 32 and make a new game: Turbo Moon Hero! This was a throwback in the fact that I actually used Stencyl for this, but the important thing was to get something done and I was apprehensive that my base code wouldn’t cut it this time around. You can play the game here:

Please accept my apologies for not announcing it sooner! So did I learn anything even though I reverted to Stencyl? Of course.

For one, I felt loose. I wasn’t concerned so much about engine structure or what was going on underneath the hood. I chose a simple idea pertaining to time and complexity and made it stick with what I had. And what happened? Game in a weekend, that’s what. Graphics, sound, code… yep. If anything, it was a breath of fresh air to see it happen. It CAN happen still. If I keep at this Haxe and OpenFL thing, it could potentially happen using that! I PLAN to make that happen.

Taking the experience back to my engine will be important. Having done three quickies in it already has helped carve things out a bit, but even using Stencyl is part of what motivated me to get started with it in the first place. I’ve been trying hard to make the engine rigidly abide by a certain ECS standard, but it may be time to shake things up and throw a wrench in the mix. I want to get it to that point where it isn’t so painful to get simple stuff going (i.e. not rehashing code that really shouldn’t be, clean ways to set things up, etc.) Just try things and see what happens, even if it doesn’t look all that shiny. Just make it work.

I’ve already posted this game as my #1GAM for the month, so I’ve been able to breath a bit easier in that regard and take some time to think about the engine post-LD32. I’ve begun trying a new idea I had, so we’ll see how that works out moving into next month. In the meantime, scoot over to Ludum Dare if you haven’t already and give my game a whirl!